Environment

4:56 pm

Wed March 28, 2012

Warm Winter Means Buggy Spring In Southern Idaho

The warm winter in southern Idaho and Montana means residents could see plenty of box elders this spring. Photo by Normanack/Flickr

Here come the bugs. It was a warm winter in the southern half of Idaho, in Montana and points east. That means insects are emerging earlier and will have longer breeding seasons.

onathan Ross is with Gemtek Pest Control in Boise. He says calls for service are up 40 percent this month over a year ago.

“And if we look at the last five or six years it’s really higher than it’s been any of those years.”

Ross says he’s getting calls for house ants in people’s pantries. But he’s especially worried about a possible banner year for what he calls flying, stinging insects.

“Like wasps, yellow jackets, mud daubers. They tend to be a problem year-in and year-out, but to have started to even see them this early it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the year in terms of their population size.”

Ross says he’s watching for earwigs and box elder bugs to creep out in the coming weeks.

While the southern half of Idaho experienced a warmer-than-usual winter, the rest of the Northwest was normal. That means Oregon and Washington residents probably don’t have to worry about being swarmed.